


Bright Eyes

by lilhex



Series: fifty years in space [2]
Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: (i was already working on a pt2 to brown eyes from yoditos pov but. i had almost given up. until!), Comfort, Father-Son Relationship, Found Family, Gen, Light Angst, Nightmares, and din comforts him and puts him back to sleep, hi i'm back with a yodito pov, posting abt grogu having a nightmare from the darkened part of his memories, this is inspired by tumblr user and graphic novelist ngozi (ngoziu on tumblr)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29007009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilhex/pseuds/lilhex
Summary: (Grogu does not have to concentrate hard to remember his past. Just like he will not have to concentrate to remember any of the events he is living through now. He will not forget this man or the way the Force surrounds and flows through him.)
Relationships: Din Djarin & Grogu | Baby Yoda
Series: fifty years in space [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2127951
Comments: 14
Kudos: 114





	Bright Eyes

**Author's Note:**

> hello all! [this is the post](https://ngoziu.tumblr.com/post/641251567748661248/this-close-to-making-a-star-wars-side-tumblr-for) that inspired what you are about to read. if you enjoy please consider leaving kudos and a kind comment. my own tumblr is @ hippolvte if you want to find me :)

_Species age differently_ , the droid had said on that first day.

The man belongs to the human species.

(Grogu knows this without having to see the man’s face.)

The man is ageing.

(Grogu knows this without having to see the man’s face.)

(What Grogu does not know is the man’s name, and the man does not know Grogu’s. There have been no introductions between them.)

 _Mando_ , they call him in some places. _Mandalorian,_ in others.

Most creatures on the galaxy do not remember much of their childhood. It fades away as they grow, slips through their brains like sand through an hourglass. But Grogu will remember.

(He knows this without having to be told, like he knows he can heal wounds if he concentrates hard enough, like he knows he can move things without touching them if he concentrates hard enough.)

(Grogu does not have to concentrate hard to remember his past. Just like he will not have to concentrate to remember any of the events he is living through now. He will not forget this man or the way the Force surrounds and flows through him.)

Grogu dreams.

(Grogu has many enjoyable dreams. Dreams where he enjoys tasty snacks, and dreams where he and the man are travelling across the universe, making up scenarios in his sleep. In some of these dreams he uses the Force to make a boulder float in midair right before it crashes the man; in others, the man is wounded, never fatally of course, but just bad enough and just far enough from any supplies or other help that Grogu has to make his way over to the man and use the Force to help heal the man.)

(But Grogu’s dreams are memories more often than not.)

It is not the Temple this time; it is none of the events of the recent days. Grogu is moving past this, floating through his memories and his past as if in a trance.

A darkness envelops him.

(He cannot make it stop. If there was a time where he could learn to command his dreams, turn them into something pleasant, he has long given up the chance on yielding this ability. He now cannot do anything but let it happen.)

In the dream, the Force is buzzing around him. It is not the light side of the Force that he remembers growing up in. This is the _other_ Force, what the masters called the dark side. Grogu closes his eyes in the dream, but still he sees.

The memories awake. The years in hiding. The enemies, and the betrayals, and the friends lost. The family lost. The Temple, destroyed. The war, raging outside, always a breath away from the violence and the brutality.

(Grogu will remember. Grogu cannot forget. But Grogu has buried these years, has enveloped them in darkness in his head. In his nightmares, they wake.)

This is not a memory. This is a dream. And in dream, the worse things happen. The bad men catch him. They hurt him. Grogu has to see his friends die; has to see them stab him in the back. Has to watch even when he is already gone, nothing left to do but watch, from inside his body and outside of it.

Grogu wakes.

Somewhere in the same space as him, in the total darkness, he hears the man shuffling about. There’s the clatter of his helmet against his armor, and then the lights go on. He man has pulled his helmet over his face, his armor on.

(The man takes off his helmet, sometimes, when he is alone. Grogu knows better than to pry. Growing up in the Temple has taught him about private things, sacred things.)

“What’s wrong, kid?” the man asks, picking Grogu up from his hammock and holds him up. Grogu is shaking. Cold sweat has soaked his tunic, and the man tugs at it with a gloved hand.

“Alright,” he says, voice hoarse from sleep. “It was laundry day anyway.”

Grogu is changed into the second tunic, the Laundry Day one that is slightly asymmetric and coming apart at the seams. The man made this for Grogu. The man is not a tailor.

The man is not gentle, either. A lot of things in the spaceship need to be punched, thumped, shaken, before they get going. The laundry machine is one of these things.

But the man is always gentle when he handles Grogu. He carries him through the ship again, now, up to the commands room.

(Grogu can reach out and read his feelings, sometimes, and the way the Force pulses about him. But he cannot know his every thought.)

The man is not much of a talker.

(What Grogu _does_ know is that though the man is a human, he is _another_ thing as well, a dying breed. Grogu knows this not because he knows the ways of the Force, but because this man is alone and full of an instinct for self preservation. Alone as Grogu is.)

This is a man who does not remember his childhood well, just like most. Yet most of his memory of childhood was wiped away not by the natural process of growing up, but by war.

(Grogu can sense the darkness that hides the man’s memories. The darkness is similar to the one in Grogu’s dreams, but Grogu’s darkness sleeps while he is awake. He cannot access it the same way he cannot see at the blind spots of his waking vision.)

Once in the commands room, the man does not place Grogu down on his usual seat. Instead, the man sits down on his chair, Grogu still in his arms.

Grogu coos at him, making himself comfortable.

The man reaches out, rests two fingers against Grogu’s cheek.

(Grogu did not understand, at first, why the man would reach out even when contact was not necessary. This was not the way he was raised, in the Temples. Though he remembers these days, he does not understand how he could withstand it, not being held. His days without the man, even before the darkness.)

The man does not hide. He does not hide from the world, even when his armor means an instant bounty on his back. He does not hide from Grogu that he is a fighter.

(Grogu had seen worse without him. All the violence is worse without him.)

“Are you ok, kid?”

Grogu is no longer shaking from the nightmare; the man’s touch, the gentleness of it bleeding warm through the cold metal, have carried him through the worst of it.

He blinks up at the man, and the world begins to rock back and forth, gently.

“Easy now,” the man murmurs, voice soothing. “It was just a nightmare.”

(Grogu had not yielded the Force in all of his years in hiding. Not until the man was in danger.)

They journey on. The man rocks Grogu on. Grogu does not fall back asleep, not yet. He is staring out, quiet. The stars pass on and on, rocking back and forth, back and forth, but eventually back, and they’re gone.

All these solar systems. All this time.

(Grogu has time on his side. He could visit them all, one by one, and not waste any.)

“Hey, bright eyes,” says the man. It is barely a whisper, as if Grogu had been asleep and he did not want to wake him.

“Your eyes reflect the stars, you know that?” he asks.

Grogu looks at the man, the way the stars reflect on his own armor and helmet, the black slit covering the eyes, a thousand solar systems, and coos.

(They do not need many words between them. They might not need any. The man and Grogu do not hide from each other.)

Grogu’s eyelids begin to fall, heavy. He does not fight back. Behind his eyelids, the man is carrying him through a blooming field, and an amazing adventure unveils in the horizon.


End file.
